All That Glitters
by amokAeolian
Summary: One LBR. Five GLUs. A battle for OCD. (OC; part-AU. Set when the PC are in eighth grade.) Reviews welcome!
1. Blurb

**ALL THAT GLITTERS**

The Pretty Committee: beautiful, flawless, untouchable. The belles of Octavian Country Day Middle School, they are equal parts envied, feared and adored, queens of all they survey.

But I'm assuming you know that part.

My name is Charlotte Hillsborough, new student at OCD and self-professed nerd. I have a few friends, most notably Layne "Layme" Abeley. Sometimes, I write stories. I wanted nothing more from my time here than to pass, unnoticed, through the crowd.

This is the story of the time I declared war on the alpha girls of the eighth grade.


	2. Chapter 1

_**Chapter 1**_

"_The tyrant custom, most great senators,_

_Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war…"_

_Othello again? _I tapped my pen against the desk, frowning at the clock. _Surely not the third time in as many years? _Only nine minutes and fifteen seconds until the lesson ended. _I suppose I could just re-use my old notes. _

Above me, Mrs Ratcliff's iambs weighed Shakespeare's syllables down, hard and heavy enough to drown someone. No wonder everyone says they don't understand Shakespeare. Listening to her read it was soporific even to me.

Still, it wasn't as if the rest of the class was paying attention. One quick glance around me revealed that precisely one girl, a fresh-faced blonde, was frantically scribbling down Mrs Ratcliff's every word. I smirked quietly to myself. _She's probably not had a single original thought enter that flaxen head of hers in her life. That, or she's an android. _A distinctly Hispanic-looking brunette, evidently a friend from the way she leaned close as she tapped her conspiratorially on the shoulder, was met with stony silence. The blonde just kept on scribbling. _Or both. _

The brunette caught my eye as she turned away and gave me an icy look, one eyebrow as perfectly manicured as a Hamptons hedgerow raised. It transformed her face – just seconds ago an exceptionally pretty, cherubic thirteen-year-old, she now looked about seventeen and rather like a housecat seeing its opportunity to pounce on a frantically fluttering bird. Taken aback, I looked away, but not before I caught her pulling a pink rhinestone-covered iPhone from her bag out of the corner of my eye. In turn, two other girls quietly extricated theirs from the row in front of me. The brunette tapped away, every so often glancing pointedly at me.

Still, it wasn't as if I wasn't used to it, even by the halfway point of my first day. Turning up at Octavian Country Day with an inconspicuous accent and even more inconspicuous wardrobe is not something I would recommend for the shy and retiring. Even so, I wasn't going to give up my high-necked sweaters and knee-length skirts to please a bunch of strangers, especially not Bitchy Brunette and her friends, who were now both periodically turning round to cast not-quite-covert stares in my direction. One of them, a slip of a chestnut-haired girl in lavender nail polish, had blindingly white teeth and golden brown highlights in her hair – she really wasn't fooling anyone if she thought they looked natural. The other, a robust redhead I liked more even as she held back giggles every time she faced me, looked over at her as if for approval approximately once per minute. I counted.

"Miss Marvil and Miss Block, would you care to inform the class of exactly what is so funny about the back of the room?"

"It means I don't have to look at your huge butt," Obvious Highlights replied nonchalantly, raising an eyebrow in an almost identical manner to Bitchy Brunette. It didn't quite have the same effect; while Brunette was so distractingly angelic the mean look was bewildering, Highlights looked older than her age already. Rather, she looked intimidating instead, like a judge, or a particularly dishonest politician.

Ninety per cent of the girls laughed at the joke; the remaining few cowered in the corner, frightened of the teacher's inevitable wrath. Usually I would have been part of the latter camp but frankly I was impressed at Block's audacity. I sat straight, ears pricked.

"See me after class, Miss Block," replied Mrs Ratcliff after almost an age. She let out a sigh which appeared to deflate her, and her reading afterwards lost any of the wan, dreary spirit it might have had before. Surely, surely she hadn't been genuinely affected by that lame insult? I studied her again. Her heavy eyebrows were tangled at the centre of her forehead and she shifted in her seat. _You have got to be kidding me. _If this had been my old secondary school in England, Block would have been suspended several times over by now.

The last six minutes until class ended were uneventful. Blonde put her hand up for every question, as expected. Marvil – was that really her name? She sounded like a stripper – put her phone away, but Block and Brunette continued texting. No, the real fun was to be had after the lesson, as I shoved my books the best I could into my locker.

Just as I was turning to make my way to the cafeteria, I could have sworn I heard the faint click-clack of high-heeled shoes down the corridor. The sound was barely distinguishable from the usual sounds of girls running across OCD's hardwood floors, but to me this was more ominous, militaristic almost. It was as if some sort of army was marching through the school.

However, soon enough I found that the hordes of girls standing close to their lockers was not to make way for an elite military unit, but, for a thirteen-year-old's tiny mind, possibly something more frightening altogether.

There were five girls walking – nay, sashaying – in a perfectly synchronised chevron formation down the corridor. With a sickening lurch of realisation, I noticed Block at the head, with Bitchy Brunette, Marvil and Blonde following closely behind. Following them was a girl I didn't recognise; she was blonde too, with an uncut fringe and trainers, smiling sweetly and looking entirely out-of-place even with her expensive-looking blue babydoll top.

It was only after I had stood transfixed for a good few seconds that I decided to get going; I wanted to get in early to lunch and explore OCD's labyrinthine library afterwards. So, without even a second thought, I slammed my locker shut and stepped into the corridor. Unfortunately, this course of action led me directly into the path of the five girls. Block was too busy looking straight ahead and keeping to the beat to watch where she was going. We smashed into each other.

My nose must have been buried in her shoulder, since all I could see was her chiffon blouse floating out behind her like a parachute, and I could quite obviously tell that she was wearing too much perfume – something crisp and musky, far too old-fashioned for a teenage girl who looked like she'd just stepped out of the Nineties. I staggered back, and so did she, a good three inches taller than me in silver snakeskin heels. Her eyes were the strangest colour I have ever seen: a kind of golden brown, like the amber in which you trap an unsuspecting insect.

"Ex-cuh-use me?"

I blinked.

"Who do you think you are?" Block crowed, her thick New York accent rising to the surface. Her voice practically dripped with wealth.

"Um, I'm Charlotte. Sorry for bumping into you like that."

"Well then, you better watch where you're going, LBR."

"LB… sorry, what?" Perhaps I would have been apologetic and hurried on my way, had she not pulled out that stupid acronym. But, perplexed, I simply stared at her as if she was speaking another language.

"LBR. Loser Beyond Repair. Duh." Robot Blonde rolled her eyes and Bitchy Brunette sniggered. "Oh wait… I forgot you were new here." She spat the word 'new' like it was the word 'stupid'. I leant back on my heels as she turned to walk past me, when suddenly I felt adrenaline shoot up through my arms and spine.

To this day I cannot fathom what I was thinking when I said, in a tone that sounded much ruder than it should have: "Sorry, who are you?"

If the silence was dead before, this remark was equivalent to shooting it between the eyes twenty-seven more times. I think I actually heard one girl emit a muffled gasp. Every single one of the five in front of me gawped, their eyes bulging. Eventually Block spoke again.

"Massie Block." _Who names their kid Massie? _"The alpha of the Pretty Committee. I thought you were just new - I didn't realise you were a total idiot too."

"The – the what?" I spluttered, looking wildly around me. Surely someone in that sea of faces realised how ridiculous this was?

"The Pretty Committee." Massie actually tossed her hair. "I guess I can see why someone like you wouldn't know about us." She looked me up and down in a way that was evidently supposed to make me feel small. As she and her friends made her way down the corridor past me, not looking back even once, I had to admit it worked.


	3. Chapter 2

_**Chapter 2**_

My lasagne looked dishearteningly limp and unappetizing, swimming around in globs of orange oil and getting more tepid and soggy by the second. I poked at it with my fork, leaving four identical pin-prick holes in the rubbery sheets of pasta; occasionally I scraped the mincemeat from its starchy prison with my knife, lying to myself that I would eat it later. It was highly unlikely that I would get any decent nourishment at OCD with Massie and her Pretty Committee still around.

And indeed they sat in the very same cafeteria, looking distractingly slender and lean over plates of salad with rosy pink sashimi dotted amongst the leaves, which were, of course, perfectly crisp and curled at the edges. They may have been idiots, but even I had to admit they made their food look beautiful by the very fact that they were consuming it. They sat in a circle around Table 18, their tiny queenly bubble only a few tables away from my own humble seat.

I was too busy being self-pitying to notice the scrawny, dark-haired girl taking her seat in front of me. This was quite a feat – I must really have been wallowing in my own despondency – since she was wearing bright red fishnet gloves, and on her head was the biggest bow headband I had ever seen, in sunset orange studded with silver.

"That was pretty impressive."

"Hm?" I relocated my gaze a couple of inches downwards, to meet her eyes. They were green and narrow, and as she spoke to me they looked like the eyes of a mad scientist or comic book villain.

"You pretty much dissed the PC. Nobody's done that for months."

"What, the 'Pretty Committee'?" Excited at finding someone who perhaps shared the attitude I did, I rolled my eyes and air-quoted with my fingers. "I'm surprised. They don't seem like the smartest of people."

"You say that, but they're sharp." The girl leaned over her plate of noodles and stage-whispered to me. "They're basically the evil overlords of the school."

"What, like Doctor Doom?" It was a lame joke, but I chuckled at the thought of Massie in a cape and metal face.

"Yeah, I guess." She looked away for a second, and so did I – I could tell she hadn't got the joke. I looked down at my lasagne again, groping desperately into the deepest reaches of my mind for a new conversation topic.

"So you know them, then?" was what I eventually came up with. "The Pretty Committee?"

"Well, yes. Everyone does." she replied tersely. "A few of them are actually pretty cool."

I looked at her in disbelief.

"Kristen Gregory is the girl on the far left," she explained, motioning towards Robot Blonde from English. I raised an eyebrow. "We hung out a couple times. She's not that bad at all. And Claire Lyons is next to Massie, who you know already. We went to see a movie on Saturday. She's not just another clone, I swear." She gave me a look so desperately sincere I felt obliged to believe her.

"And the others?"

"Right, so Alicia Rivera, the second-in-command, the beta. She's the pretty Spanish one." Bitchy Brunette sat next to Claire, one seat away from Massie, looking petulant and marginalised. "Watch out for her. Seriously. Massie can be nice to Claire sometimes, on a good day. Alicia's just a sneaky female dog." Suspicions confirmed. Massie was a diplomat, in her own, definitively middle-school, way; Alicia was just a mean girl along for the ride. "And Dylan Marvil is the girl with the red hair. She's not so bad – get her on her own and she's okay. Sometimes I get the feeling she's only mean because she has to be, or Massie will ditch her."

I studied the girl very carefully. Clearly she'd been observing the PC for a long time; she appeared to be something of an oracle in that regard. I imagined going to school with them every single day for two years, watching them eat lunch at Table 18 (as, I imagined, all popular cliques sat at the same table every day, like they did in films). I imagined watching them walk through the corridors just like I had seen them do, listening to the silence fall whenever one of them spoke as if their words were dewdrops that might evaporate if not caught and savoured. And yet she sat here in front of me, with her giant orange bow and fishnet gloves, not a heeled shoe or diamond earring in sight. Suddenly I admired her deeply.

This quiet shift in feeling was interrupted by the girl herself. "So where do you come from? There's three different rumours going round already, just so you know." She smirked, her green eyes flashing again.

"Long story short, my dad got a new job. Work's not so great in England at the minute, so we decided to move over here. Good schools, et cetera."

"Huh. That's kind of boring, actually. I expected something way cooler." She rested her chin on a pale hand and looked down her nose at me, a smile lifting the corners of her mouth. She was pleased, perhaps, that I was so ordinary. "I'm Layne."

"Charlotte." I grinned. "So, do you have a – group - then?"

"What, a clique?" Layne frowned. I made a note to myself of the correct terminology. "Kinda. We're not really a big deal, and we're pretty relaxed. No alphas, betas or any of that bullcrap."

"Do you have a name?"

"Yeah. I made it up myself." She flashed me a proud smile. "We're the Excentrix. But spelled with Xs, because it looks cooler."

"No way!" Beaming, I gave her a nod of approval and clasped my hands together at my chest in enthusiasm. "You guys sound like a superhero team or something."

Layne was on the cusp of a high-pitched laugh when she froze, her eyes fixed on something just above my shoulder, and shot me what was unmistakably a warning look. My guard went straight up, shoulders prickling, as an evenly-tanned, pearl-adorned wrist and hand hit the table. _Alicia. _

"Hey, Catherine!" she began. _If she's going to torment me, she could at least get my name right while doing so. _Her white smile looked genuine, but I had seen that mockery just behind the eyes many times before. "I just came over to say that Massie's really sorry for being so mean to you earlier."

"Oh." All the air in my lungs puffed itself out. Was she being genuine? I couldn't help but nod and look into her nut-brown eyes. They were friendly eyes, that was certain – eyes that said _I will try my best to make you happy. _Eyes that left you bereft of any mean or unpleasant thing you might have to say to her. The bitchy look she had given me just an hour previous vanished from my mind.

"So yeah, she told me to come over here and tell you. Because she couldn't be seen talking to you and – her."

"Uh-huh." I hated the way she talked about Layne like she wasn't there; it was something my parents had warned me not to do when I was six. But there was still something disarming in those eyes, so stupidly I gave her the benefit of the doubt yet again.

"And she said she had some really important advice for you. You know, as a friendly thing."

"Right." I nodded.

There was a pause, as if for dramatic effect. Then she said: "You might not want to eat that lasagne; it has just so many carbs, and you might want to think about losing a little weight." She walked away, tossing her hair in triumph, before I could reply. Most of the girls sitting near me tittered mercilessly, and the Pretty Committee howled with laughter; that is, except for Claire, who nervously chewed her bottom lip. Layne was right – she really wasn't just another clone.

"Told you," Layne sang. "Total. Female. Dog." But my face must have betrayed my utter humiliation, because she immediately glared at several of the laughing girls. Miraculously, they shut up. "Honestly, don't let it get to you. They know how to push people's buttons, that's all. I don't even think Alicia genuinely believes that – seriously."

"Seriously?"

"Yep." Layne cocked her head to the side. With her pointed chin, attentive gaze and narrow nose, she looked uncannily like a sparrow. "Sit with us tomorrow – we're organising a protest to make them use free-range eggs in the cafeteria."

As academic and politically-minded as I believed myself to be at that point, I could not make that prospect sound 'cool' no matter how hard I tried. I simply made a non-committal noise.

Layne frowned at me, deadly serious. "If every girl in this school stopped shopping for one week and saved instead, we'd have enough money to buy eggs for the whole school twice. Principal Burns can shut up about not having the funds."

"Yeah, but that would require getting them to stop shopping for a week." Four girls, dressed identically in white miniskirts and pink vest tops, walked breezily past us; they were obviously trying to emulate Massie and her crew, but there was something about the way they leaned forward ever so slightly, as if they had the pressure of being not-quite-popular literally on their backs at all times, that marked them out as different and inferior. Their leader, a blonde with a flipped-up fringe, glared at us as she walked past. Her eyes weren't Alicia's brown, buttery and sweet like the bottom of a crème caramel, but small and blue and hard and cold. Looking into them felt like falling over on concrete.

"What are you looking at?" she squawked, finally, just as I realised I'd been staring at her for longer than was socially acceptable. She stood even taller than Massie in her significantly gaudier stilettos; her hair, obviously painstakingly curled, collected in huge dry clouds around her chin.

Then I realised.

That was it.

Her _chin. _

"I'm looking at that massive spot." I said, raising my eyebrow and doing my best Massie impression. "Do you not wash your face or something? That's really bad." To my eternal regret, I even put on that faux-stupid, airy uptalk the Pretty Committee loved so much. The girl started back as if I'd lunged at her, and promptly stalked away; her crew followed suit.

Layne just sat opposite me, resting the side of her face on her palm, and grinned.


	4. Chapter 3

_**Chapter 3**_

Homework was no big deal that night – just some English, which nobody ever did anyway, according to Layne, and three Maths problems. Nothing I couldn't handle, I thought, arranging my pens and pencils around my sheet of file paper, but as I stared between the bluish lines I couldn't keep my mind off Massie and the others. It was like they had just stepped out of a film or something – I felt privileged, almost, to have such a group to hate at school. It meant that I had something to fight against, something that alleviated the mind-numbing boredom of the school routine.

At last, having chided myself into working, I printed in block capitals the title of this week's essay: "Discuss in detail the ways in which Othello is similar to Iago in Shakespeare's _Othello_."

"Easy enough," I said to myself under my breath, and picked up a pen. The work at OCD was more interesting than some places I'd been before, but still trivial compared to what I had encountered last year. It looked as though, once again, I would perform decently without any real motivation to try. "In Othello, Shakespeare uses the characters of Iago and Othello to illustrate the same concept: the idea of appearance being other than reality, sometimes deceptively so.

"The language of both characters, for instance, is full of direct contradictions…"

Before I could even exemplify my first point, my mobile – a black flip phone, nothing fancy – buzzed twice. _My first day here and I have a text message? It's almost like I have an established group of friends already. _I picked it up. Unsurprisingly, Layne's name flashed on screen.

LAYNE: HOW R U AFTER TODAY?

CHARLOTTE: COULD BE BETTER. HOW'D YOU GET MY NUMBER ANYWAY?

I was fastidious about correct grammar while texting. I guess it made me feel superior to other people my age – besides, the rules of English had always just "clicked" in my head. It naturally made more sense to me than text talk.

LAYNE: UR PARENTS GAVE IT 2 ME. LIST OF HOME #S FRM SKL EGG PROTEST WAS AWESOME. THREATENED TO EGG PRNCPL B'S CAR!

CHARLOTTE: SOUNDS PRETTY FUN. REGRET NOT GOING NOW.

LAYNE: N E WAY. MEET UP MALL SATURDAY? NEW SUPERMAN MOVIE OUT. THOUGHT U MIGHT LIKE

CHARLOTTE: SOUNDS GREAT! (Two whole exclamation marks – almost unheard of from me.) I'LL SEE YOU THERE AROUND 12.

At this point my chances of actually doing my homework were zero. Layne was the first girl from Octavian Country Day that I had wanted as a friend, and she appeared to return the sentiment. Even if I sabotaged myself with my own enthusiasm – somehow I always ended up behaving awkwardly whenever I tried to hang out with anyone I liked – I knew the movie would be worth seeing anyway.

My parents were still in the kitchen when I went downstairs.

"Done your homework already, Charlotte?" Dad raised an eyebrow, not looking up from his newspaper. By his side was a mug of tea (which I assumed he would soon declare as dishwater and leave unfinished).

"Yeah," I replied. I didn't look him in the eye but it wasn't as though he could tell. "It was dead easy. Just some English."

"There was a girl calling for you earlier. Said she wanted to see you Saturday?"

I nodded. "Layne. A nice girl from school."

"Nice to see you're making friends, Charlotte."

I shifted my weight from foot to foot. I could handle my parents pestering me over my grades, and had accepted it as a fact of life which followed naturally from higher-than-average school performance. Recently, however, they had taken an interest in my social life, insisting that I should make an effort to meet people. Layne was cool, but I wasn't expecting her to want to be best friends with me – and besides, she had a clique of her own already. I fully expected my life at OCD to be similar to what it was like back in England: after a couple of weeks I would quietly fade into the background, existing to the majority of the school population only when I put my hand up in class. The rest of the time I would walk the halls, silent and intangible. In my old school people used to bang their locker doors in my face, not on purpose, but because they didn't realise I was there.

"We're just going to see a movie. I should be back by 5."

The television played gentle string music in the living room next door; my mum had probably fallen asleep in front of one of her period dramas. All of a sudden I felt the age gap between myself and my parents become vast and uncloseable.

"Have fun. You deserve it." My dad looked up at me and smiled. The gap narrowed again.

Layne and I walked there in frustrating silence – I couldn't think of a word to say all the way from the mall entrance to the cinema, or the "movie theater" as she called it. Today her hair was up in a ponytail, and she wore purple jeans; in my grey corduroy skirt and tight librarian bun I felt painfully incongruous.

"Two for Superman, please," Layne said brightly to the shaggy-haired boy at the counter. He cheered up visibly – I imagined not many people around here said "please" or "thank you", from the experiences I'd had so far at OCD. I tried my best to flash a convincing smile at him before we went into the screening, but it probably looked more pitying than anything. To work in the retail sector in Westchester Mall, I decided, must be the worst job in the world; you get to watch while successful people treat you like dirt, trapped, as if in a magic mirror, as an echo of agreement.

"Sure." The boy (he couldn't be any older than sixteen, maybe seventeen, what with his unfortunately nasty case of acne) looked down obstinately at his shoes while printing out our tickets and handing them to us.

As soon as we got through the door, Layne dissolved into giggles. "He _totally _liked you."

"What?" I could feel the back of my neck heating up against my will. "He was three years older than me, maybe more. That's gross."

"You smiled at him." Layne fished around in her bag for a sour gummy snake and chewed off its head unceremoniously. "Not many people smile around here." After a moment of reflection, she added, "You know, you're like the Anti-Massie."

I studied her carefully. Her green eyes fizzed with mischief. "How?"

"You've both got brown hair," she said, finishing off her gummy snake and reaching for another. "You're both kind of serious, and you know you're pretty, right? Not, like, _Alicia _pretty, but pretty."

Coming from anyone else, that would have hurt, but Layne's quickfire delivery and chirp of a voice made it sound more like an observation than a deliberate insult. Besides, she was correct – I was uninteresting and dowdy, without a hope of matching the Pretty Committee, even Claire, in the looks department, but I was far from ugly. "Thanks," I replied, leaning back in my seat with a smirk.

Ten minutes into the film, my phone buzzed again. _Crap. Should have turned that off. _I flipped it open and was surprised at what I saw:

LAYNE: TXT UR DAD 2 TELL HIM UR COMING BCK TO MINE. I HAVE AN IDEA


	5. Chapter 4

_**Chapter 4**_

_**A/N**: THIS FIC IS NOT DEAD! Yes, I have returned to write the rest: been watching Suits on TV, which has somehow brought me back to tales of middle-school politics, and reminded me how much fun writing this actually is. To readers, new and old: do leave reviews – they're always appreciated!_

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously." Layne crossed one purple-clad leg over another and raised an eyebrow. "You ever seen _Grease_? _Pretty in Pink_? Frickin' _Princess Diaries_?" On the desk in front of her was an orange notebook, glittery and spiral-bound. She tapped it with a chewed biro and began to write _SHOPPING LIST _in scrawled capital letters across the first page.

Walking back to her place had been like being a secret agent ready to receive her first mission. I'd followed a few places behind her while she'd frantically texted; inwardly I marvelled at her ability to look down at her phone and walk at the same time. Judging by the prevalence of mobile phones around here, I figured it was a skill that girls in Westchester just assimilated.

When she wasn't texting, her eyes were fixed forward, laser-like in focus, as though she was some sort of robot. I barely had time to drink in the huge grounds of the Abeley mansion, admiring the elaborate water features and the vast gravelled paths wide enough for two of me to lie across, as she strode forward towards the front door. The red bricks and elegant bay windows were hardly what I'd envisioned when she first sat opposite me at lunch: the house was beautiful, but it certainly wasn't very _Layne._ But before I had time to picture the bohemian studio apartment I imagined would suit her better, she'd rushed inside and pulled me by my sleeve into the hallway.

Her bedroom upstairs, on the other hand, was exactly how I imagined it. Not down to the exact details, of course, but I knew there would be colours everywhere, mismatched furniture and art supplies on the floor. I'd also known somehow that it would be a total mess. Something about it – even the mothball smell - made me want to jump up, explore every shelf and snoop into every drawer in her dresser, just to see what curiosities I might find. Now I was sitting on a rainbow-coloured throw and gazing up exasperatedly at dozens of glow-in-the-dark stars attached to the ceiling.

"Those are all _movies_, Layne." I tried to sound amused, but it must have come across angrier than I'd expected; she looked up at me suddenly, and fixed me with a catlike glare. I held her gaze. "You don't just give someone new clothes and turn them into a different person. I'm not going to get noticed by the Pretty Committee just for wearing lipstick. Makeovers just don't work in real life."

Layne rolled her eyes. "We go to a school called _OCD_, Char." In the interim, she'd also started calling me Char: I wasn't used to that level of informality, but it certainly sounded more natural coming out of her mouth than my full name. "Weirder things have happened. And besides," she added, flashing me a sharp, evil-mastermind grin, "a bit of drama is always kind of fun."

"A bit of drama?! They already hate my guts!" I protested, as Layne walked past me to search through her wardrobe. "I just want to go to school quietly for a year and not have to worry about -" I searched for the word – "all this."

To my left, Layne pulled out a black pencil skirt, appraising it with narrowed eyes. "They hate your guts, and you hate theirs, right?" she replied, her attention only half on me by this point.

"Well, yes, but that doesn't mean I want to –"

"Don't you want to do something about it? End their reign of terror? Be the people's champion? Do what almost everyone who's ever seen them has wanted to do and –"

"Knock them down a peg. I know." I sighed as, after some rummaging, she found a houndstooth shirt to go with it. "But this is just going to look stupid." I was partly referring to myself and partly to the outfit she'd laid out on her bed – it looked more like something a thirty-year-old secretary would wear to work than anything in which an eighth-grader might show up to school.

"Think of yourself as a politician, and me as your campaign manager," she said brightly, totally ignoring the lame noises of opposition I was making as she held the shirt up to my chest. "You know how I said you were the anti-Massie? Well, that's how we're going to present you."

"_We_?" I almost choked.

"I texted Meena and Heather. Emergency sleepover. This shirt's actually Heather's, and the skirt's my mom's, but they'll do until we can get you some new stuff. You're going to be the first person in OCD history to challenge the Pretty Committee and win."

"Listen, Layne." Her pocket vibrated and she checked her phone before I could make eye contact. "I just don't – I can't – how do you expect me to talk to people like Massie can? It's hardly something I'm good at. I haven't got the social skills for this."

Smiling, she looked me up and down. "It's not your job to have social skills. Your job is to stick to the script." She tapped the notebook again and waved her pen at me like it was a magic wand; clearly, she was enjoying this too much. "Meena and Heather will be here in ten minutes. Are you allergic to any hair products?"

* * *

Approximately half an hour later, I was standing over Layne's sink while she lathered medicinal-smelling suds into my scalp. Meena and Heather, both of whom were as scarily politically-minded as Layne, as well as dressing in similarly bright colours, sat at the opposite end of the palatial bathroom, whispering to each other over a laptop.

"So I have to ask," I began, trying not to gulp down a mouthful of soap. "If everyone wants to take down the Pretty Committee – why has nobody done it yet?"

I felt Layne's hands move around to the back of my head. Tepid water began to slowly dribble down my shirt. "Because they all want to be _in _the PC as much as they hate them. If the chance came up, they'd take it in a second. So everyone fears them too much to say anything about it."

"Yes, but –"

"She means why haven't _we_ done it yet," drawled Heather, rummaging in her pocket and popping a banana chew in her mouth.

"Because we don't have shiny enough hair or expensive enough clothes, and even if we suddenly did, nobody at school would take us seriously," fired back Layne. I heard the distinctive hiss of a shower turning on, and in a matter of seconds felt its full force against my forehead. Meena wordlessly draped a white towel around my neck. "But they'll take you seriously."

Attempting to shake some of the moisture out of my waterlogged hair like a spaniel, I had never felt less inclined to be taken seriously in my life, but already Layne was sizing me up again and picking out another bottle from her bathroom shelf in a businesslike fashion. Certainly, this was serious to her, and to Heather and Meena as well; looking at their dead-set, pensive faces, I felt obliged to go along with it all – or, at least, was too shy to really insist otherwise. Besides, I was beginning to wonder what exactly Layne's plans for me were, and something in the back of my mind had decided it would be fun to find out.


	6. Chapter 5

_**Chapter 5**_

_Five minutes._

Massie looked at the clock on her rhinestone-encrusted iPhone for the tenth time in as many seconds and drummed her fingernails against the glass Pinkberry table. She did not expect the PC to be late for meetings, and she certainly did not expect them to be late for meetings she called. As her mother put it: a commitment was a commitment, and if you wanted people to respect you, commitments had to be honoured. No exceptions. Still, she tried to look as nonchalant as possible, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back in her seat even while her head spun and she tried not to get sweat stains on her new light grey sweater she had bought for the autumn. Routine PC meeting or not, she hated lateness, and she had to admit it made her nervous.

She had just pulled out her phone to fire off another text to Dylan or Kristen when Alicia stepped through the door.

"Hey, Mass. Are we -?"

Massie made a show of leisurely checking her Facebook before she looked up at her beta. "Where are the others?"

"Kristen had to finish some homework before her mom would let her go out."

"And Dylan?"

"Stopped by to grab some mint M&amp;Ms downstairs. Some idiot on the Internet told her they were negative-calorie. But, Mass, isn't this just a bit –"

Massie looked at her, eyebrows raised, her expression level but with just enough danger behind it to let Alicia know she might be in deep water if she pushed any further. Alicia got the message for once, and promptly closed her peach-glossed mouth.

"So. It's a new school year, and that means we have to up our game, as usual. I have," said Massie, reaching into her black tote bag and pulling out a lavender file of pristine documents, "a couple ideas." She nodded towards a pile of fashion magazines stacked neatly on the corner of the table. Alicia naturally grabbed a Spanish Vogue; Massie noticed a new shade of polish on her nails – a deep burgundy, close to black but with the telltale red gleam when she held them under the light. Obviously, it looked gorgeous on her; probably more gorgeous against her naturally darker skin than it would be on Massie herself.

"Is that the new Chanel?" she asked, as politely as she could. "Didn't that colour sell out in –"

"Minutes. I know." Alicia grinned. "I had my mom on the phone for hours before it even went on sale. I managed to convince her it was a birthday present for my cousin."

"Your cousins' birthdays aren't for months."

"I know!" She smirked, triumphantly inspected her nails and crossed one leg over the other. Massie caught a glimpse of a bright red sole on her black slingbacks. "I'm good, right?"

Kristen and Dylan slid through the door next, trying to look as polished as usual, but Massie could tell when they were ruffled. "Sorry we're late," grimaced Kristen, running a hand nervously through her dark blonde hair.

"It's cool." The alpha's words implied she was shrugging it off, but her raised eyebrow suggested otherwise. "_If _you can tell me where the hell Claire is."

The sound of sneaker-clad footsteps jogging towards the PC's table told Dylan and Kristen they didn't have to answer. "Sorry, Massie," said Claire, sliding into the one empty seat next to Dylan. "I forgot we were at Pinkberry today." Her bangs were frizzy with sweat and her heavy breathing suggested she'd run all the way there.

"Hmm." Kristen lifted an index finger off the table and her sea-green eyes lit up. "Hold on. We _are _at Pinkberry today. This isn't our usual spot – it's where Massie takes us when she wants as few people as possible to see what we're doing. Which means…"

Dylan's eyes caught fire too, as she caught Kristen's thread and followed it up. "I knew this was more important than a normal PC meeting!"

In response, Massie made her 'shut up' gesture. "This is _nawt _any more or less important than an ordinary PC meeting. But this is _eighth grade_. Our final year at OCD. So this year has to be extra-special. Our grand finale, if you will." She smiled elegantly, passing magazines to each of the girls who had just arrived. "Alicia and I have just been making lists –"

"Is this about that new girl?" piped up Dylan again.

"_No, it is nawt_." Massie gave the redhead a serious danger-glare and pointed at her with a French-manicured finger. "And the importance, _or not_, of this meeting is no longer under discussion." If she was being completely honest with herself, Massie knew that wasn't quite the whole truth. Any new presences at OCD needed to have an eye kept on them, especially one who tried to cross the Pretty Committee on her first day. And _especially _one whose parents were rich enough to move to Westchester from Britain at a moment's notice. But she'd faced losers like Charlotte before, and won. Who said this time was going to be any different? "As I was saying, Alicia and I have been making lists of the essentials for this year. It's fall, so we're talking light knitwear, warm colours and dark manicures. And by Monday I want everyone to own a new pair of leather gloves, and to have a box of suitable hand-me-downs for Kristen and Claire."

"Sure," chorused Alicia and Dylan. No protests. No questions. Massie hadn't felt this much in control for a while, and she got a serious buzz off it. Her fingertips tingled with the knowledge that this would be the year the PC would really dominate, but by now she knew these things were never as easy as they seemed at first. She made a mental note to start buying higher heels – to make her look taller, therefore older, therefore more mature – and to get the highlights in her hair darkened a little. She wanted every tiny detail about her image to scream 'power', to match the level of power she would have in her hands by the time this year was over.

The Pinkberry door opened again. In walked a brunette she hadn't seen before, in clothes – well, not quite perfect enough to covet, but certainly nothing she'd sniff at. Her hair was in loose curls, perfectly full, and though she wasn't naturally tall, the heeled ankle boots she was wearing gave her enough of a boost to look a decent height. Alicia followed her gaze, eyes narrowed.

"The skirt's second-hand, last season."

"Yeah, but it's Vivienne Westwood." Everybody looked at Claire. "What? I read the same magazines as you guys!"

"Do you know who she is?"

"She must be going to OCD. Last season or not, no public schoolgirl's going to be able to afford that kind of outfit."

"Then why haven't we seen her yet?"

The brunette opened her mouth to recite her order; when she heard her voice, Massie's mouth fell open. "We _have _seen her before."

"So? Who is she?" Dylan grabbed onto Massie's shoulder to try and get a closer look.

"That's the British new girl."

"Do… we like her now?" Claire looked up, somewhat hopefully, into the alpha's eyes, but her knotted brows told Massie she already knew what the answer would be.

She shook her head. "No," she said. "No, we don't."


End file.
